Taiwanese-American multimedia artist Nick Dong dares himself to “blow people’s minds” with his immersive installations.
The Oakland metalsmith, painter and sculptor who uses cutting-edge technology and physics creates works with advanced scientific and handcrafted components, interactive actions, and light, sound and digital elements that are designed to evoke a metaphysical response.
His exhibition “11 to 88” on view through Aug. 25 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco represents the first 11 works in a larger project, “Auspicious 88,” a collection of 88 sculptural and immersive pieces he plans to finish by 2028.
In “11 to 88,” eight Buddhist symbols representing good fortune are portals into a rich exploration of 11 states of human condition. Light, sculpture and sound installations “Parasol of Luck & Prosperity,” “Dharma Wheel of Ego & Egoless,” “Treasure Vase of Blessing,” “White Conch Shell of Desire,” “Lotus of Constant & Change” and others offer encounters that speak to real, surreal, known, fantasy and imagined realms.
“My career journey has driven me to creating work not just for me and my fulfillment, but to craft opportunities for audiences to encounter it. When they see it, I have witnessed how people’s minds are blown. They jump back and that moment when it clicks and they restart their minds to a whole new perspective about what art is? That is what drives me. Sometimes my work’s resolution even blows my own mind,” says Dong.
Over a decades-long career, Dong, 50, has come to believe he can consistently create something out of nothing. That conviction gives him not an ego boost, but a greater sense of responsibility to his audience. He says, “I have found that whatever I cook up, it leads people to have spiritual experiences. This has triggered my own yearning for spiritual growth. Since I came up with the 88 idea, with this big dream, I’ve gained a confidence. My soul has found its mission. This mission is bigger than my teachers, bigger than anyone who has influenced me. This is the moment I’m ready to take on this machine. I have reached a point where there is a ‘you have to do this’ message.”
An actual dream was the spark that induced “Auspicious 88.” He says, “Last May, in a dream I saw a person looking at my artwork. My work always has light components that light up with the sound. It’s like a light show. This person’s face glowed and she was really engaged. She moved her face closer to my sculpture. Then she turned her head and saw a lot of people looking at other pieces and their faces were lit up too. She had a warm and fuzzy feeling sharing this work and seeing more pieces, more people.”
The dream swept him into a state of feverish creation: “I gave myself a ‘go’; I want to accomplish the 88 by Aug. 8, another 8-8.”
Dong works in a spacious studio filled with antique furniture, electronics, fine jewelry, chemicals and other materials. To some, it seems “chaotic and visually unorganized,” but in the clutter, Dong sees hidden potential: “A diamond I have can become glamorous jewelry, but also, it can make you look close. It’s tiny, but when the light shines on it, there is a spark. Your attention gets close and you want to see it closer. That physical action moves you closer and you start to see other materials around it. … When people move in, the attentional detail pushes their minds to go to introspective places.”
Drawing viewers’ visual and audio focus is particularly obvious in “Victory Banner of Enlightenment” in which a gold bowl on a pedestal is bathed in a pool of light. Visitors are invited to tap the bowl with a mallet; the resulting “gong” travels through the room and causes dozens of upside-down bowls suspended on overhead beams to sound in reply. Inevitably, people look to the ceiling. Like characters in Dong’s long-ago dream, their faces are illuminated by the light cast from above.
Dong says his lunges into technology and varied media represent a natural resistance to hiding within one niche: “I don’t have fear to screw things up. Most people find something they’re good at, try to perfect it, get recognized, get successful. That becomes their branding. Once they’re comfortable, fear keeps then in their bubble. That goes into every aspect of their lives. I don’t want to exclude myself from any topic, material, way of working, aesthetic. Utilizing all of them—science, technology and art—I can reach people as universally as possible.”
That means Dong includes humor to lighten darkness, sorrow, sexuality and other heavy topics. Upon moving to the United States to attend graduate school, he was fascinated by how Americans fixate on physical traits and projected status. Calipered measuring devices titled “Peter Meeter” and “Hooter Meter” made from sterling silver and 14-carat gold, Dong says, are “for measuring your counter-partner’s penis or breasts. It’s actually very scientific. I remember I was shocked at how out-front people were on online dating sites. They actually ask about things like that.”
With the calipers and other work, an exquisitely designed object can become a talking point for discussion about judgments based on other people’s physical attributes, or political, economic and social status. Dong adds, “Through humor in art, I can talk about uncomfortable things, like people liking or not liking you based on your hair color or penis and cup size.”
Dong’s YBCA exhibition is accompanied by workshops and opportunities to participate in his Mendsmithing Project, which began in 2019. At the time, he forged wedding rings of a friend whose husband had died into a single object of tribute. Soldering treasured family jewelry and heirlooms into permanent embrace, he offered free “mending” services at Oakland’s Mercury Twenty Gallery.
Recently, responding to the undeniable, unresolved divisiveness, anger and sorrow surrounding the war in Gaza in many communities, he led 16 people in a workshop, saying, “Mending pieces, they experienced grief, but also healing.”
Now four years since the crisis at beginning of the pandemic, Dong says, “This whole world on the surface has a more tumultuous, up and down disruption. That’s why I create artwork that brings people back to calm, to their centers, to their inner spaces. My technology and art is about taking them not to outer space, but to having freedom to travel to an inner place that is calm, easy, normal. It’s you. People need this and when they see it, they’ll tell another person who needs healing to come to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.”
“Nick Dong: 11 to 88” continues through Aug. 25 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. Admission is $5-$10 and free Wednesdays and every second Sunday. Visit ybca.org.
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